Question: Tips on reducing ammonia in tank

Hi everyone,

I got my first axolotl nearly two weeks ago. before I got her I needed too pass a water test in the pet shop to prove my tank had cycled.

exactly one week after bringing her home I did a 15% water change (Saturday the 28th of July ).


on Monday night and for some of Tuesday night I noticed Medusa (my axolotl) was hiding under her filter, and constantly swimming against the glass, which I read was a sign of stress from high ammonia.


yesterday (Tuesday) I received my API master test kit and found that the ammonia was ridiculously high (about 2.0ppm).


I immediately did a 30% water change which brought it down to 1.0ppm. I also treated the tank with prime (2 drops for every 4litres of water) which if I read up correctly will bind to the ammonia for 48hrs where it wont harm my axolotl.


today, I did another 30% change and its looking like the ammonia is still high (between 0.5 and 1.0ppm).


thankfully nitrates and nitrites are both 0.


I have no idea how the ammonia spiked so high, I have been removing poop nearly as soon as I see it and I never leave food uneaten in the tank.


I would really appreciate any tips on how to further reduce the ammonia down to 0.0, and also keep nitrates ant nitrites at 0.

any help would be greatly appreciated, because even though I only have her about 2 weeks, I've already grown so fond of her!

thank you!,

Eve

Re: Tips on reducig ammonia in tank

You don't necessarily want to see nitrates at 0. You don't want them high, but the presence of some nitrates indicate the presence of healthy bacteria in the filter substrate. So it sounds like she's in an uncycled tank, meaning the nitrogen cycle has not been established. That's not ideal, but not insurmountable....I bought my two older axies complete with their tank and filter, and while the cycle didn't completely crash when I set it up it got a bit hairy for a while and I had some ammonia spikes.



Now, the Ammonia is spiking so high because the tank isn't cycled, like I said before, so if you choose to leave her in the tank, you're going to need to keep testing the water and doing changes. That said, you would probably be better off to take her out and put her in a bin of cold dechlorinated water, doing 100% water changes daily, and let the filter do it's thing, don't chill the permanent tank, you want to encourage the bacteria in the filter media. Keep testing the water, you're going to see ammonia, then eventually a spike in nitrites, and finally you should see 0ppm of Ammonia and Nitrites and some nitrates. You want to be keeping an eye on your parameters after that, plants can help keep the nitrates low. i recommend moss balls since they don't suffer from being nosed around.

Re: Tips on reducig ammonia in tank

If your tank is uncycled, which it sounds like it is, your first few weeks of having a tank will read 0's for everything so you might have thought you were done when you hadn't even started, thus "passing" the test.
Nitrates present with a 0 for ammonia and nitrite mean you've finished the cycle. So zero's for all would suggest it hadn't finished.

If your tank is uncycled and you want to keep the axolotl in the tank while you cycle be ready for some work.
You'll need to be doing massive water changes, 50% or more every day, sometimes twice a day. Ammonia is dangerous past .25ppm. While cycling with animals in the tank for their safety you'll need to be doing massive water changes. This will slow down the cycle by a lot. Expect it to take well over a month for the ammonia bacteria to colonize and another three to four weeks for the nitrite bacteria to colonize. Nitrate bacteria will be colonizing from the start so you should start to see low readings of nitrate soon.
You'll need to test your water in the morning and at night. It's a lot of work. Adding prime will help, esp through the rough patches of the nitrite spike, nitrites can spike past 2.0ppm during the day/night.

I did my cycle using animals, feeder fish, and it was crazy how much even they could spike a tank. I did water changes mostly because I didn't want them to suffer needlessly.

Re: Tips on reducig ammonia in tank

Thanks for all your help and advice,


What size tub should I get for tubbing her and doing 100% changes until my main tank is finished cycling? Shes currently about 6inches in length.

Also what readings will I be getting once the tank has cycled. It's coming up to two months since I started cycling, so I'm really surprised it's still not cycled.

What kind of ammonia monitor do you use?